Supporting Zoo Asian Elephant () Welfare and Herd Dynamics with a More Complex and Expanded Habitat.

Ensuring good health and welfare is an increasingly important consideration for conservation of endangered species, whether free-ranging or managed to varying degrees under human care. The welfare-based design of a new habitat for Asian elephants at the Oregon Zoo focused on meeting the elephants' physical, physiological, psychological, and social needs 24 h a day and across life stages. The habitat was designed to encourage activity, promote species-typical behaviors, support changing social dynamics, offer increased opportunities for choice, and provide biologically meaningful challenges.

Recumbence Behavior in Zoo Elephants: Determination of Patterns and Frequency of Recumbent Rest and Associated Environmental and Social Factors.

Resting behaviors are an essential component of animal welfare but have received little attention in zoological research. African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) rest includes recumbent postures, but no large-scale investigation of African and Asian zoo elephant recumbence has been previously conducted. We used anklets equipped with accelerometers to measure recumbence in 72 adult female African (n = 44) and Asian (n = 28) elephants housed in 40 North American zoos.

Elephant Management in North American Zoos: Environmental Enrichment, Feeding, Exercise, and Training.

The management of African (Loxodonta africana) and Asian (Elephas maximus) elephants in zoos involves a range of practices including feeding, exercise, training, and environmental enrichment. These practices are necessary to meet the elephants' nutritional, healthcare, and husbandry needs. However, these practices are not standardized, resulting in likely variation among zoos as well as differences in the way they are applied to individual elephants within a zoo.

Walking Behavior of Zoo Elephants: Associations between GPS-Measured Daily Walking Distances and Environmental Factors, Social Factors, and Welfare Indicators.

Research with humans and other animals suggests that walking benefits physical health. Perhaps because these links have been demonstrated in other species, it has been suggested that walking is important to elephant welfare, and that zoo elephant exhibits should be designed to allow for more walking. Our study is the first to address this suggestion empirically by measuring the mean daily walking distance of elephants in North American zoos, determining the factors that are associated with variations in walking distance, and testing for associations between walking and welfare indicators.

Free mate choice enhances conservation breeding in the endangered giant panda.

Conservation breeding programmes have become an increasingly important tool to save endangered species, yet despite the allocation of significant resources, efforts to create self-sustaining populations have met with limited success. The iconic giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) embodies the struggles associated with ex situ species conservation. Here we show that behavioural mate preferences in giant pandas predict reproductive outcomes.

Validation of a novel cognitive bias task based on difference in quantity of reinforcement for assessing environmental enrichment.

Cognitive bias tasks purport to assess affective states via responses to ambiguous stimuli. We hypothesized that a novel cognitive bias task based on positive reinforcement using quantity differences would detect changes in affect in captive grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis). We trained bears (n = 8) to respond differently (nose or paw touch) to two stimuli (light or dark gray cue cards), with responses counterbalanced across bears.

The value of enrichment to reintroduction success.

Reintroduction attempts have faced low, albeit improving, success rates, especially for threatened and endangered species reintroduced from captivity to the wild. This is not only a concern for conservation, as the low success of reintroduction also implies an animal welfare issue for the individuals concerned. Success rates are particularly low for species that live in complex social structures, require greater training during development, and exhibit higher levels of intelligence.

Organochlorine contaminants in blubber from stranded marine mammals collected from the Northern Oregon and Southern Washington coasts: implications for re-introducing California Condors, Gymnogyps californianus, in Oregon.

Re-introduction of California Condors into Oregon is currently being considered, but there are concerns about the safety of potential food sources of this species. Condors are opportunistic feeders and a largely available food source for this species will be stranded marine mammal carcasses. We analyzed 37 blubber samples from 7 different marine mammal species collected from the Oregon and Southern Washington coasts for 18 organochlorine (OC) pesticides and 16 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Role of familiarity and preference in reproductive success in ex situ breeding programs.

Success of captive-breeding programs centers on consistent reproduction among captive animals. However, many individuals do not reproduce even when they are apparently healthy and presented with mates. Mate choice can affect multiple parameters of reproductive success, including mating success, offspring production, offspring survival, and offspring fecundity.

Characterizing gonadal and adrenal activity by fecal steroid analyses in pygmy rabbits (Brachylagus idahoensis).

In 2001, the sudden collapse of the Columbia Basin population of pygmy rabbits prompted the initiation of a captive breeding program to facilitate reintroduction, but reproductive success in captivity has not met expectations. Therefore, the objective of this study was to characterize the reproductive and adrenal endocrinology of this endangered rabbit species so that appropriate management strategies could be developed to monitor animal welfare and increase reproduction. Fecal samples were collected from 27 female pygmy rabbits over three breeding and non-breeding seasons.

A survey of elephant husbandry and foot health in North American zoos.

The foot health of elephants in human care is a longstanding concern. In 2001, the AZA Standards for Elephant Management and Care were published recommending husbandry to improve foot health. This article reports the results of a 2006 survey: basic statistics describing facility, husbandry, and foot health attributes are reported and relationships among variables are investigated.

Effects of rubberized flooring on Asian elephant behavior in captivity.

Six Asian elephants at the Oregon Zoo were observed to determine the effects of a poured rubber flooring substrate on captive Asian elephant behavior. Room utilization also was evaluated in seven rooms used for indoor housing, including Front and Back observation areas. Data were collected in three phases.